Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson was born April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey, and grew up believing his grandmother Ethel May was his mother and that June, the glamorous older sister who breezed in and out of the house, was exactly that: a sister. Neither he nor most of the family corrected the story; a Time magazine researcher fact-checking a 1974 profile told him the truth, that June was his birth mother and Ethel his grandmother, after both women had already died. Voted Class Clown at Manasquan High School, Nicholson took a job in the mailroom at MGM's cartoon studio at seventeen, then spent a decade in bit parts and B-movies for Roger Corman, undistinguished enough that by thirty he had nearly decided to become a writer and director instead.

Nicholson had one film left on a commitment to write and direct when a small role in Easy Rider in 1969 brought his first Oscar nomination and reset his career at thirty-two. He won Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment in 1983, and Best Actor again for As Good as It Gets in 1997, and his twelve total nominations remain the most any male actor has received. Between those wins he played Jake Gittes in Chinatown, Jack Torrance in The Shining, and the Joker opposite Michael Keaton's Batman in 1989, a deal reportedly worth more than sixty million dollars. His last film role came in 2010; since then he has made only rare public appearances, including a 2025 walk-on at Saturday Night Live's fiftieth-anniversary special.

He has six children by five women, and for decades declined to publicly confirm paternity of one of them, Caleb Goddard, born in 1970 to Susan Anspach, until testing settled the question in 1998. His longest relationship, seventeen years with Anjelica Huston, ended after she learned Rebecca Broussard was pregnant with his child while Nicholson and Huston were still together; he and Broussard went on to have two more children without marrying. His own paternity was never resolved at all, his birth mother June never named his biological father, and Nicholson has said he does not know who the man was. The public image, built on interviews and a famous grin as much as on the films, sat over a private life that, on the record, was considerably less settled than either.

Nicholson, at eighty-nine, has not made a film in over a decade and gives almost no interviews, so what counts as his legacy is still being argued out in real time rather than settled by an obituary. Critics and directors continue to treat Cuckoo's Nest and Chinatown as the peak of American character acting in the 1970s, while younger audiences increasingly meet him first as the Joker or through decades-old late-night clips. Whether the twelve Oscar nominations or the tabloid decades end up the more durable part of the record is, at this point, an open question rather than a closed one.

Jack Nicholson's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Easy Rider film
  Supporting role as George Hanson; first Oscar nomination 1969
• Chinatown film
  Jake Gittes 1974
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest film
  Academy Award, Best Actor 1975
• Terms of Endearment film
  Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor 1983
• Batman film
  The Joker 1989
• As Good as It Gets film
  Academy Award, Best Actor 1997

• April 22, 1937 aged 0 Born in Neptune City, New Jersey
• 1954 aged ~17 Voted Class Clown by his graduating class at Manasquan High School
• 1957 aged ~20 Joins the California Air National Guard
• 1962 aged ~25 Marries Sandra Knight
• 1969 aged ~32 Easy Rider brings his first Oscar nomination
• 1974 aged ~37 Learns from a Time magazine researcher that his sister was actually his mother
• March 29, 1976 aged 38 Wins Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• 1989 aged ~52 Plays the Joker in Batman
• March 23, 1998 aged 60 Wins a third Oscar, for As Good as It Gets

• Stanley Kubrick 1928–1999
  Director whose technically ambitious films redefined science fiction, war, horror, and cinematic authorship. directed by
• Marlon Brando 1924–2004
  Actor whose method acting revolutionized film performance and influenced generations of actors. friend and neighbor of
• Morgan Freeman b. 1937
  Academy Award-winning actor whose commanding voice and gravitas made him a beloved cultural figure. co-starred with
• Meryl Streep b. 1949
  Most nominated actor in Oscar history, renowned for her chameleon-like ability to inhabit diverse roles. co-starred with